Suitable

This project was very personal to me. The book I made was based on my mums life, She died last year and I had been wanting to make a book about her since then. The project was almost exactly a year after she died so i decided this was the time to do it. I tried to make the book about major parts of her life both happy and sad. I tried to strip down my illustrations to try and make the ideas behind each image as clear as possible. I am not sure if the way I illustrated this book was the most suitable way to illustrate a story that had some really sad emotional content but wanted to see if it was possible. It is difficult to judge the effectiveness of something when you have such a close emotional link to it. I received some good feedback although it did reflect my thoughts that the images I used may not be appropriate for the subject matter. Trying to separate myself from the subject presented a challenge, because I was so familiar with the story I found it difficult to judge whether or not I had made clearly communicated the information that I wanted to. the group crits helped me with this and provided me with a more independent viewpoint.

I think the images in this book would benefit from a mixture of different media, I drew each image and then added colour and extra elements using Adobe Illustrator. I think using predominantly digital processes has made these images too flat and doesn't create enough of an atmosphere or feeling of crafting. I think I could have made the compositions more interesting and tailored the surroundings and colours to match the mood of the content more effectively.

The image of the cramped tube train could have been made more dingy and grey. I could have worked more on the composition to make it more uncomfortable and cramped. Through visual language we learned certain methods of composition that make an image 'uncomfortable' to look at. Although most of the time this would be seen as a mistake in the composition of a piece I think that in circumstances such as these it could work as a way to link the viewer to the emotion of the character on the page.